How Brands can Design Digital Experiences for Young Children?

Designing products for children requires careful consideration of their unique characteristics and requirements, especially when creating a virtual experience for them. With this in mind, our study aimed to identify the principles and design strategies essential for crafting effective brand experiences for children aged between 4 and 7 years.

Our approach consisted of three integral steps: observing stores selling stationery, art & craft materials, and toys; interviewing children and parents to understand their preferences and features; testing the concepts with children and refining designs based on their feedback.

Multiple principles and insights emerged from the three rounds of research and web analytics following the launch. While these are crucial for designing experiences for children aged 4-7 years, designers should also understand that kids' preferences vary based on their gender, cultural, and socio-economic context.

Children are interested in various characters and enjoy interacting with them. Customising and interacting with these characters allows children to personalise their gaming experience and engage on a deeper level.

• They want different characters (cartoons, superheroes, avatars, animals, etc) in the experience. For example, children were fascinated by the hunter character introduced in the brand experience we launched.
  

• They should be able to interact with these characters and customise them. For example, kids love the concept of Tamagotchi where virtual characters grow with them and help them achieve tasks.

Apart from visual design, audio as well as haptic feedback on surprise and reward elements, can enhance the game experience and help children understand and learn from the game. Kids do not read instructions; audio descriptions and visual cues help them figure out their next actions.

There should be levels in the experience where they unlock each level after completing the existing ones. This principle is based on the understanding that children like to feel a sense of accomplishment and progress.

However, the number of levels should be between 3 and 5. Additionally, children should have a sense of how many levels there are and where they currently stand. Otherwise, the game may seem never-ending, leading to a drop in engagement among kids.

This is based on the theory of Reinforcement Learning where actions are rewarded to strengthen positive behaviours. Rewards can motivate children to continue playing the game and work towards achieving goals.

• After each level is completed, provide appreciation/validation in the form of textual/ visual elements. For instance, when a kid completes one level they expect the system to show appreciation by saying “good job” or by the sound of claps.
  

• For each task they complete they need to collect coins/stars/points that and should be able to exchange for something else.
  

• Unlike adults, kids do not care about materialistic rewards.

Children are not listeners, they learn from their experience of doing the tasks hands-on. When children are rewarded for tasks they complete, they internalise the behaviour even if it’s in a digital realm.

Children have shorter attention spans, making it challenging to engage them in an experience. On average, the entire experience took 15 minutes to complete during the usability testing, indicating that it takes approximately 3 minutes to complete one level. However, post-launch web analytics suggest that half of the users are dropping out after each level. This indicates the difficulty in keeping them engaged beyond 3-5 minutes.

It was observed that most kids of this age range either cannot read or do not want to read texts. Hence, written instructions, or other textual content isn’t of much help. Using voice/audio interactions and tactile cues can help.

Kids can read one-word CTAs, but they mostly rely on the colours of the CTAs. For example; green means “go ahead”.

In case, the brand is interested in creating a database of information about the kids, be mindful of the fact that kids do not know about email IDs and they don’t know how to type phone numbers either. They know how to write their name but they find it difficult to type.

The above insights can help design better experiences for kids aged 4-7 years. However, ethical considerations like modelling good behaviour and responsible use of screen time are important when designing for kids.

For more, experience Camel Wonderland or explore our full case study.